What Was the Sin of Sodom and Gomorrah?
Sodomy is a homosexual act. We get the word from the story of Sodom, where the typical understanding is that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of homosexuality. But that’s just one sin, and God said the sins were great in number. Did God remove Sodom and Gomorrah because of the repeated acts of one transgression or because many different sins were happening?
You’ve probably seen or heard interviews where they question pastors if homosexuality is a sin or if someone will go to hell because of being a homosexual. Sadly, I’ve witnessed too many unbiblical answers, but I digress.
Jessica Alba once said in an interview that at the age of 12, she went to a church camp where she became a Christian. That next year, she met a new friend who was a homosexual. She said he was such a nice guy that the Christians must have it wrong. Why would God send a likable person to hell just because he was homosexual?
The argument from gay rights activists is that Sodom is no more because of the lack of hospitality. They may even quote from Ezekiel 16:49 that says, “Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” See, right there, it says that the guilt of Sodom was that they didn’t take care of the poor and needy. In the text of Genesis 19, we see that Lot was hospitable to the two newcomers, similar to how Abraham showed hospitality to the three visitors in the previous chapter. But when the townsmen came, they ignored hospitality and just wanted to use the two men.
In each of these three examples, the focus is erroneously on homosexuality. I’ll answer the question that a lot of pastors get wrong during interviews. No, God does not send someone to hell for being a homosexual. God casts people from His presence because of rebellion to His commandments. Look what James said. James 2:10 “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.”
Is it just homosexuals that God will send to hell? No. So why all the focus on homosexuality when it comes to Sodom? The answer to that is to downplay the sin and to make it acceptable behavior. But that’s a topic for some other blog.
Sodom and Gomorrah faced judgment because of a variety of sins. Just as in the days of Noah, their inclinations were toward evil all of the time. Baal Peor worship was common in the region east of the Jordan River. Moses and the Israelites encountered it in the story of Balaam, coming up in the Book of Numbers. They also fought the Raphaim or the giants of that day. There is evidence that both were present in Sodom.
Baal Peor means god of the opening or god of the hole. Without being graphic, the worship of Baal Peor was sexual. Sex with anyone and anything was a part of the worship. There’s too much to get into here, for it’s a study in itself. But Baal Peor worship included the worship of Molech and Ashteroth. Followers would sacrifice their children to Molech, and Ashteroth was a fertility goddess.
In the previous post, we narrowed down the outcry originating from either the cities or the blood. The answer is both. The shedding of the blood of innocent children in the worship of false gods and the rampant perverted sexual worship was an abomination that could go on no longer.
There are plenty of stories in the Bible of deviant sexual behavior throughout the land, but God never destroyed those areas. The sin in Sodom had to be on a scale that doesn’t compare to anything before or after. To try and narrow it down just to homosexuality as the ruination of Sodom is to miss the wickedness that prevailed within.